Dunmow’s roads are to receive a much needed makeover with the help of an additional £17.5million cash injection to fix the county’s potholes.

Essex County Council this week published a list of the 700 worst urban roads in the county which it intends to target for repair by March 2015. In Great Dunmow, Ash Grove, Chelmsford Road Industrial Estate, Highfields, Jubilee Court, Knights Way and Lukins Drive are all priorities.

Last month, ECC added £5.6million to a £4.4million grant for road repairs and described this latest additional scheme as an “ambitious” maintenance programme.

Cabinet member for highways, Councillor Rodney Bass, said: “These roads are in urgent need of repair and we are making the manpower available to get the job done, recently doubling the number of maintenance crews to 36 to bring the county’s roads up to standard.”

The crews will also fix all current carriageway defects, but not those that may subsequently emerge, on main roads and rural roads.

Dunmow Mayor Jonathan Cadwallader welcomed the move.

He said: “Residents will be delighted when they see people actually mending the potholes.

“We have a lot of people complaining about them and asking when they are going to be fixed.”

Dunmow’s county councillor, Susan Barker, said the town had been fortunate in the way Essex had gone about prioritising the roads to be repaired.

She said: “The county council has tried to be quite equitable and taken the top 50 roads in Uttlesford that it believes need the most work. The council could have chosen to focus on the 700 roads across Essex most in need of repairs and Uttlesford would have been nowhere.

“This is an example of where the district has come off better than other areas.”

Elsewhere in the Broadcast’s patch, Broomfields, The Heath, Little Heath and Cox Ley in Hatfield Heath, and Hallingbury Close, Little Hallingbury have been listed among the 700 roads for repair. Garnetts, Leyfield, Longcroft, Priors Wood Road, Roseacres and Sycamore Close in Takeley will also be targeted, along with roads in Thaxted, Stansted Mountfitchet and the rest of Uttlesford.